We're No. 1:

All others are #2 or lower.

I spent a well rounded Saturday watching all 7 games of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals (ok, I skipped game 5, sue me) and it occurred to me.... The Penguins are the Stanley Cup Champs. That thought's been popping into my head at odd times. The whole idea is just to awesome for the brain to hold all at once so it just dribbles in a bit at a time. So in a completely random fashion here are some.... well, random thoughts and things I didn't have room to say in other blogs.

Turning Point of the Finals: Quite a few people would say that the turning point for the team was Staalsie's break-away shortie in game 4, and that may be true. Some would argue that it was Flower's save on Cleary's break-away in game 6. I'm sure everyone has their favorite moment, but for me the defining moment was the save that wasn't even a save. 2:00 left to go in the second period of game 6, Zetterbug (strange little insect) works around the Sequoia and flips a little nothing shot that bounces off the post and heads straight for Flower's ass, there was a collective gasp as nearly everyone who wasn't blind drunk had a flashback of game 6 last year when the same guy rang a shot off the opposite post that MAF promptly sat on and squirted in the net. But not this year, The Tower of Flower Power calmly looked behind him, gauged the trajectory and sat on that little black biscuit,(3:55 in) stopping it cold. But that wasn't the moment, only the prelude. The moment was a short close-up right after the save, when I could see Fleury's relieved grin and knew that the dopey-goal monkey was not only off his back, but dead and buried. That was the moment when, in his own mind,(and mine) he broke the Red-rag's mojo and believed....

Do Not Use as Floatation Device: Nearly everyone knows the story after watching the last two SCFs. Phil Bourque jumped into Mario's pool holding Lord Stanley's Shiny Candy Bowl and promptly sank it like the Titanic. Why is the Stanley Cup in Mario Lemieux's Swimming Pool? is not just a question you ask the 'Ole Two-Niner, it's the title of a book written in 2001 by Kevin Allen. Written 9 years after its initial dunking and 8 years before the Cup made a return trip to Les Magnifique's house where the guys (fueled by many refills of the cup with Moet) decided the cup wasn't truly in Pittsburgh until it had taken a swim in Super-Mario's pool. By the looks of the pic, it floats a lot better now than it did 17 years ago. Most people know, or have heard some story with the SC, it's been kicked into a canal, left on the side of the road, been a baptismal font dunked in pools at least 4 times now, but somehow when it journeys to da'Burgh it takes a trip into the surreal. Phil Bourque is named twice on RCS's 'Top 10 Stanley Cup Stories'. Once for etching his name on the inside, and also for 'The Dive', and there are unconfirmed reports that it was left at the curb at the Marriot in '92 when whichever drunken Penguin was watching it jumped into a cab and tore off into the night. But along with this year's moistening of the Cup, it seems that it doesn't seem to know the difference between Oakland and Sewickly. On the way to the Cup's Micheal Phelps imitation in Mario's pool, the handlers ended up lost in Oakland (about 10 miles in the wrong direction) and had to ask directions from a cop. Remember, this all happened less than 24 hours after they'd won the cup.... now that they'll have it for the next 100 days or so, Ganesh only knows what trouble that innocent (?) silver tower is going to get into.

More to come. Be afraid, be very afraid... MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!